The Facebook 3.1 update (followed by the 3.1.1 bug fix version, released last night) brings some big new features to the table in the form of contact syncing and push notifications. The app asks you upon launch if you’d like set up the push notifications, and you can find more specific push settings within Settings -> Facebook. Syncing your Facebook friends list with your iPhone contact list is a little less obvious, and is initiated from a Sync button from within the app’s Friends list.
It comes as no surprise that we’ve got a few Facebook users on the JAiB team, and we’ve assembled a couple of impressions of the app after the jump. They’re probably worth checking out, especially if you plan on syncing your contacts.
Push notifications
These come in very quickly, but there are still a few problems. Only one team member, Brandon K, claims to have noticed a notification sound or vibration. The rest of the team sees only a silent, static pop-up notification. So either the rest of the JAiB team has lost its hearing and sensitivity to touch, or there’s a notification bug with the app.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that the push notifications come in much faster than the app can react. I’ll get a notification about a wall post, for example, but the app won’t know about it (despite my mashing of the refresh button) until about a minute later. Push notifications are useful, but only when the app that loads up afterwards knows what the heck is going on 🙂
Contacts Sync
I have no first-hand experience with this feature, but a couple of more daring souls on the JAiB team have tried this out. You can activate the sync through the Friends list within the app, and you’ll get a prompt asking whether or not you’d like to overwrite some of your contact information with the data from Facebook. These are likely items like profile pictures, e-mails, and phone numbers.
Josh Gard had all of his info replaced by Facebook data, despite tapping on the “no, please don’t replace all my stuff” button. He’s also had instances where contacts who have no Facebook profiles (ex. Patrick Jordan, all-star blogger) are given the profile pictures and info of similarly named Facebook contacts (ex. Michael Jordan, all-star basketball player). My examples are a bit of a stretch, but something like that really did happen.
Brandon K once again had a better experience with the Facebook app than the rest of us did (maybe it just likes him better). He also told the app not to replace any of his contact info, and so it didn’t.
Conclusion
I’m thinking of renaming myself Brandon K and seeing how the Facebook app works then. How about you, folks? Anybody here noticed any other funky bugs, or great new changes that haven’t been mentioned?
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TAGS: facebook, push notification, social-media
